The Story Store IV: School Days
by ArenLuxon
Summary: The Story Store gets some weird customers once again.
1. Chapter 1: TNK

The attendant, and also owner, of the Story Store was reading a book. It was a calm day today. As she turned the page, the bell chimed, indicating a customer had arrived. She put her book down and looked at him. She was used to quite a lot, so she didn't think this one was particularly weird.

He was dressed in a red shirt with rolled up sleeves and jeans. On his wrist was a simple watch. In this regard, he didn't look much different than their usual customers, however, this guy had a long beard and mustache that had once been black, but had since faded to grey. His hair, strangely, hadn't faded and was still dark black. A nervous half-smile played around his lips permanently.

He looked at the lady behind the desk. For a moment, he was intimidated by her stunning beauty. She was tall, with long curly blonde hair and glasses. The glasses had an anti-reflective coating so they didn't obscure her clear blue eyes. She was dressed in tight fitting business-like clothing. She had taken off her black blazer to combat the heat. The white button-up shirt she wore underneath was opened just enough to keep him staring, but also closed up enough to stay professional.

The man swallowed his fear and walked to the counter "Good morning," he said, politely. He was still quite nervous.

"Good morning, sir," she said. "I'm afraid I don't recognize you."

"Obviously," he said, now relaxing a bit. "I'm from TNK."

TNK? She had never heard that name before. With a few clicks, she brought up the list of companies. It was ordered according to popularity. She typed 'TNK' and the program automatically started scrolling down, and down, and down, until finally: TNK. She clicked on it.

"So," she said, hesitantly. "Your greatest achievement, so far, is...'Papa to Kiss in the Dark'?"

"Indeed," he confirmed, quite proud of himself.

Every story, no matter in what form, was created right here. But she had never approved of this monstrosity. Well, _approved_ was not the right term. They sold stories, they didn't judge them. Yet she wondered which of her assistants had actually written this without notifying her.

"So, this OVA-series is about a guy who…" she cleared her throat. "Has a relationship with his own father."

"Oh, don't worry. He's adopted."

"How reassuring." She did her best to hide the sarcasm. "Wait, you made _two_ episodes? What were you thinking?"

"Sorry if we are a bit too ambitious for you," he said, dryly. "Technically you made them by the way."

"Uhum, I apologize, sir. What brings you here?" She quickly changed the subject.

"I would like to adapt this into an anime," the man said, producing a visual novel.

The case showed a bunch of girls who stood in the radiating sunlight on a staircase. White letters on a blue background formed two words.

 _Oh no_. She felt memories flooding back. That thing had been a nightmare to create.

"You think they will let me?" He pondered, rubbing his beard.

"Oh, don't worry about that," she assured him. "They won't turn down a lucrative opportunity like that." She took a deep breath. "An OVA-series then? About two episodes."

"What, no, I want twelve episodes, on TV."

"No one is gonna broadcast this," she insisted.

"We'll subtly cut out all the sex scenes, don't worry." He seemed determined to actually go through with this.

"Well, I'm not the one who has to approve it," she said, implying it wasn't her problem if he blew his entire budget on this. "What storyline would you like to go with?"

"All of them."

"Excuse me?" She almost choked on his words.

"You heard me. We'll include a bit of everything."

"You mean, Makoto fucks, _everyone_? Simultaneously?" Even in the visual novel that was never an option. Although there was one particular ending...

"Yeah, obviously."

She almost didn't want to ask the next question, but she had no choice. "And the ending? One of the bad ones I guess?"

"Even worse. I want multiple people to die. And more horrible of course, maybe a decapitation."

"Of course." What had she expected? "And the animation style?"

"Static, like the visual novel. We don't have much budget after all. Oh, and quite silly."

"Wait, what? Why would you do that?"

"Because this is a super serious psychological story about breaking up, bonding fear, insecurities, you know."

"Yeah, so…"

"So we should deliver it as silly as possible, just to mess with our viewers. And then, once they are in, we'll drop these super obvious hints that things will go wrong, but they won't notice because they are completely caught up in the standard tropes of the genre and the way love stories usually go, so they will just assume this is a normal story. And then, *bam*," he clapped his hands together. "We'll completely shatter that expectation. In fact, maybe we could actually physically shatter the logo. That would be so cool."

Oh dear. She could already see hell breaking loose if anyone ever broadcasted this. "I hope you are aware that 99% of your audience will hate you after this?"

"I only care about the other 1%."

That was certainly a funny business model.

But then again, this guy did want to adapt _that_ visual novel.

Of all the crazy customers that had walked in here…

"Oh, and I have another idea," he said.

"Go ahead."

"We'll put a love manual in there. A completely useless one."

"I assume this is a metaphor?"

"Obviously. The cultural norms of dating put pressure on young people. Even if you don't like going to the movies, society will push you to go anyway because it's a date. It's crazy, right?"

"No one's gonna notice that obscure metaphor. You're adapting a _visual novel_ , what kind of audience do you expect? _This isn't Shakespeare_."

He shrugged. "We'll see."

She seriously doubted anyone would watch this.

"Oh," he added. "and change the tagline in the first episode. I want a solid hint to what will happen later on."

"No one's gonna read that," she insisted. "It's not even proper English. Have you seen this grammar? ' _In the school, the three guys met. Their relation had been changed in the season, and turned into three love stories_ '." It made her cringe to even read it.

"You get the point," he said, shrugging. "Oh, I want something else as well. A reference to the ghost story of Yotsuya."

"No one knows about that."

"Japanese people will know it."

She sighed deeply as she typed away on the keyboard. "Could you stop putting obscure references in your anime?"

"You people are no fun."

"I think we're almost done," she said as she looked at her screen, pondering. "There's isn't much room left."

"Could you squeeze in a scene where Sekai plays with Kotonoha's boobs?"

"I assume this is a metaphor as well?"

"Just a little yuri reference. We should give the fanfic authors something to work with, right?"

"Right," she repeated slowly. "Shall I put in a scene with inflatable boobs as well?"

"That's an amazing idea actually."

She really had to keep those things to herself.

"Well, we're done I think," she said.

"But, I have some fun ideas for an OVA as well."

"Yeah well, come back to me with that _after_ your series sells."

"Just you wait," he said. "I'll have enough to buy my own boat after this."

"I hope it's a nice boat then," she said.

"Oh it will be," he guaranteed her before leaving.

 _Well_ , she thought. _At least he didn't ask me for a pointless tsundere._

He turned around in the doorway. "Just one more thing."

 _I walked right into that one, didn't I?_


	2. Chapter 2: Mathers Numakichi (Overflow)

_Two years earlier_

She felt her heart stop for a moment when she saw him.  
The man wore a black undescriptive hoodie which hid most of his features, but she knew who it was anyway. Last time, she clearly remembered, he had come in here with a crazy idea about a 'revolutionary visual novel'. As was her job, she had calmly listened to him. He had insisted on making the main character a sociopath that raped his own children and half-sisters. As if this wasn't bad enough, he had also modelled this main character to his own boss. She had declared him insane, obviously.

But the Story Store sold stories, not criticism. Although, sometimes, she felt like criticizing these people was over ninety percent of her job.

"I have an idea," the man said. "It's revolutionary."

"Of course it is," she tried hiding her scepticism. "Mr Mathers," she quickly added.

"So, an entire visual novel in the style of an anime. How does that sound?"

"You mean, like, cutscenes?"

"Yeah, about forty hours sounds right I believe."

"Uhm, sir," she tried to find a way to tell him this. "What kind of budget do you have?"

"Nothing, but I do have twelve overworked, passionate people, will that suffice?"

She tried finding a polite way to tell him he was insane, but found none, so she quickly changed the subject.

"So, will you use the usual cast?" She asked.

"No no," he said. "I'll use the _children_ of the usual cast."

"But," she said. "These are all related. Surely you don't mean to…"

She couldn't see him raising his eyebrows, but she was certain he had. "Is that a problem?"

"Look, if you need a big budget like that, I would leave out the incest. And the lolicon." she looked at him sternly.

"But," He looked like a child who had his favorite toy taken away. "I had this really cute girl planned. Kokoro, that's a cool name, right? _Heart_."

"Save that for your next game." _If they ever decide to make it._

He bit his lip. "Fine. But I want to put in some kind of hint about the incest. Maybe I do something with the kanji for 'Itaru' and 'Tomaru'."

"Yeah sure. But no weird scenes where your main character fucks someone's mother, or sister."

He sighed. "Can I at least put in some threesomes?"

"Fine, maybe one."

"What? No way, I need at least three."

"Two. Final offer."

"Okay okay, ye. What happened to 'the writer is always right'?"

"The writer doesn't always have the budget to execute his ideas." Really, if she let him loose, who knew what they would end up with.

"But I can make him fuck his own mother, right?"

"What? No."

"Not even in a spin-off?"

"No. Maybe if by some miracle this gets massively popular, you can make a weird mini-game where he can fuck everyone, including his mother, but until then, no way."

He grumbled a bit. "Fine, just wait, this will be the most famous visual novel ever."

"Sure, sure," she said. "Now, what kind of story did you have in mind?"

"Ah," he said. "Just hear me out. So there's this guy. And he looks totally like an average harem protagonist, you know, dense, not very smart, insecure. Except, he's also completely spineless, indecisive and a sex addict and he doesn't really get the consequences of his actions. And he's boring, like, in summer, he spends all day lazing around at the beach."

She didn't like where he was going with this.

"So," Mr Mathers continued. "He's surrounded by girls who all have some kind of problem. Like, one has attention issues, another has a trauma, a childhood friend that still has a crush on him, an overly jealous friend and so on. And then, I'll tempt the player to fuck all of them."

"Wait, what?" She could no longer hold back now. "Are you telling me it's a full on hentai where you can just fuck everyone and they are fine with it?" If it was, she had been filling things in the wrong section the whole time. Hentai's worked differently. She would have to throw away all male character designs and replace them by a standard design. After going through all this trouble to create Taisuke and Makoto, ye.

"No, don't worry," Mr Mathers said. "It's eroge, not nukige. The girls aren't okay with him fucking everyone. If you do fall for the temptation, you get a bad ending."

"Hm, not bad. I like it."

"I mean, a _really_ bad ending. Like, suicide, murder, those kinds of things. Oh, and make it absurdly hard to find all the scenes."

"Why?"

"Just to mess with my readers." She saw a hint of a smile beneath his hood.

 _Unbelievable_.

"So, if I get this right. The consequences of your choices are impossible to predict?"

"Yes," he said, enthusiastic. "That's cool right? It's an amazing metaphor for real life."

"Remind me of that when I'm writing your threesomes," she said dryly.

"That's a metaphor as well."

"For what?"

"Well, uhm, for, character development?"

"You want us to put character development _inside_ a threesome?"

"Obviously."

 _What is wrong with you?_

She couldn't say that out loud, obviously.

"Maybe they will make an anime out of this one day," he said.

"Keep dreaming."

"Just you wait," he said. "One day they will write fanfics about this. You'll see."

 _Luckily_ , she thought, _the Story Store does not make fan fiction._

"Well," she said. "If this becomes popular, you can buy a _nice boat_ with the profits."


End file.
